Tanning

The principal ingredient of its success, leather is a design material for Poltrona Frau: a symbol of elegance, prestige and quality.

 

Pelle Frau® originates from the careful selection of bovine hides of mainly European origin, thus reducing supply distances and the resulting Co2 production in transport. Hides from farms for the food industry that respect international animal welfare strategies promoted by the WOAH, the World Organisation for Animal Health,  for the protection of animals in their living, feeding and slaughtering conditions.

 

Each hide is a by-product of the food chain, a waste product that is optimised in the tanning stage to become a noble and valuable material. Pelle Frau® is always full grain, the most precious and resistant layer of the bovine dermis.

Tanning working stages

Start your journey in the tanning process. Discover how Pelle Frau® is born.

Tanning

The bovine layers before being immersed in the tanning drums are prepared with some preliminary steps that are used to strip the leather in order to start the process of selecting the hides and the external layer of the dermis, which in the case of Pelle Frau® is always "full grain". Soaking, liming, fleshing and splitting allow the hide to absorb the tanning materials in its entirety, this combination of chemical and mechanical actions stabilizes the skin organically.

Retanning

Once the Pelle Frau® has been carefully tanned, in the name of sustainability and the lowest possible environmental impact,  it is time for retanning. The combination of chemical and mechanical actions aimed at defining the type of article determine the final aspects of Pelle Frau®: hand, structure, body, grain and shine. The hides are dyed with anilines by immersion and through the mechanical action of the drum. For over twenty years, Poltrona Frau has switched from solvent-based finishing processes to water-based treatments.

To give greater elasticity, softness and resistance to tearing, the hides are greased. The staking softens the hand of Pelle Frau® and gives a more or less visible grain to the surface. Pre-drying and drying eliminate moisture from the leather, the air drying completes the process and with the fulling it softens and re-hydrates the Pelle Frau® leather to give it its characteristic touch.

Finishing

The finishing process is the combination of chemical and mechanical actions to uniform the color and protect the external layer. This phase concerns only pigmented and semi-aniline leathers and is aimed at improving technical performances and final look. The protection given by spray or by hand, can have different compositions: pigmented, transparent, with oils and waxes, each one gives a special aesthetic appearance to each of the collections.

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